Fully Relying On God

Some of you are not going to like the pictures on this post.  I am warning you!  If you don't like FROGS then you'd better move on quickly.  I have lots of frog pictures today!

Because we have the flooded rice fields around here... we have the frogs too during this season.  They sing to us all night long making quite a racket and they hurriedly plop into the rice field when Choco walks along field edges.  There are great big toads... brown ugly things.  And there are tiny green frogs... those are cute...  Cute if you consider frogs to be cute.

We even have a few frogs that seem to live out on our fence or bushes... I consider them my pet frogs.

Tetsu doesn't like frogs much.  Occasionally a frog will get into the house and I will have to scoop it up and put it outside before the cats find it.  It does no good to ask Tetsu.  He won't touch a frog.

The other day a daring frog hopped up to Choco's doghouse and Choco promptly gobbled it... 

"Oooh!  Yuck!  Choco!  You killed a frog!"

But Choco hadn't gobbled it down and I guess the frog jumping around in her mouth so surprised Choco that she spit it out and looked at it suspiciously.  The poor frog had been traumatized but was still jumping so I acted as a frog savior and took it over to a hydrangea bush.

"I don't know how you can bear to pick up those frogs.  They are wet and cold and GREEN!"

Maybe the frog will pay me back by eating an extra portion of mosquitoes this season...

But even Tetsu admits that the many frogs napping on the forest leaves have a "cuteness" about them... if they are just napping.  How many frogs can you see here?  I think I see 6...

Okay.  Are butterflies more attractive than frogs?  Across from the frog "apartment" two butterflies were drying their wings. 

 The patterning was beautiful!

Okay... So much for frogs.  Not everyone thinks they are cute...

The next time you see a frog, please remember...

Fully Relying On God! 

The acronym gives the amphibians a bit more personality...

E-mail typo

Someone let me know that my e-mail address was wrong on the last post I wrote a couple of weeks ago.  So sorry about that.  I have corrected the address on the last post and here it is again if you are still interested in contacting me...

taniwa07@gmail.com

A predicament

The other evening after dessert of some store bought cupcakes, I was sitting peacefully, -- piecing-fully -- and Tetsu was asleep on the sofa, when I heard a thump, bump, whump coming from somewhere under the table.

"Well.  That's a predicament!"

Velvet.  He had been enjoying the crumbs left in the cupcake cup and then got stuck inside the cup... The other cats watched suspiciously as Vel kept backing up and running into obstacle after obstacle.

"Mom?  Mom!  Someone turned out the lights.  M-o-m!"

Sewing on a Friday!

I had a nice sewing day yesterday.  Some sewing with friends, some on my own.

My friends and I were together to make a baby quilt for the one young mother-to-be.  Mrs. Nakazawa and I had worked on this a couple of weeks ago when the other two ladies couldn't make it.  The original plan was that the four of us would hand piece three blocks each, put them all together on another day, add borders and pass the whole thing around for hand quilting.  But with the two ladies absent that first week, Mrs. Nakzawa and I opted for machine piecing and had the center finished and waiting.  Yesterday we all made Prairie Points and added an outer border.  The quilting pattern will be drawn on this week and we will sandwich the quilt at the next gathering and then hand quilt as originally planned.

 Here are Rumi-san's finished Loves Me quilts.

And here again is Mrs. Nakzawa's quilt.  Aren't these interesting quilts in different color schemes?  That is something I like about making the same quilt with friends.  The different colors really shows the person's personality whereas you'd think a quilt pattern is a quilt pattern.

And for my own sewing, I put together all the leaf blocks on the Turning Leaves quilt.  This is what I'm working on for the hospital's autumn quilt.  Most of those blocks were made from Mrs. Furui's stash and buttonhole appliqued by some volunteers at the hospital.  I just laid out the 9 large blocks here on the floor (four leaves to one large block), but they will actually have dark lattice between the blocks.  And I have to think about a border too...  Pretty, pretty leaves!

Cupboards

First news...

I finally got my new passport!  It took 6 weeks but I have it!

Next news...

My camera lens came back...  It works like new and I am out about $90 for repairs.

Nothing much else going on around here.  The other Wednesday, between classes, I stopped for lunch at a chain restaurant.

Do you know what this is?

 No... Well, that is the back side.  This is the front side.

Still don't know?  It is a key.  And it fits into the lock like this.

The restaurant was Japanese style and in the entryway, there was a place to take off shoes and put the shoes into the shoe cupboard... which was trying to look like old style shoe cupboards of another era of Japan.  The pieces of wood have numbers and the Japanese syllabary on it which corresponds with the cupboard shelves.  It is unusual to take off shoes at the less expensive restaurants like this but this chain is trying to be as Japanese as possible.

And here is a picture of my house shoe cupboard.

Okay.... if you insist.... This is what the inside looks like.  Mostly cat and dog treats in there on the top shelf.

In Japan we end up taking off our shoes almost everyplace...  Most people know about the custom when entering a house... but did you know that Japanese children take off their shoes before entering the school?  The children have "indoor" shoes... sort of like soft sneakers, which they wear inside the school.  This is also true at the kindergarten.

Looking at my own shoe cupboard photo makes me think I'd better go clean it out.  See you later!
 

Bible verses

I've been  making postcards to send to a friend in the hospital.  I've got all these pictures of flowers and nature and it seemed a way to put them to good use.  If I add a Bible verse... well they might be uplifting and cheerful.  So here is my "gallery" of cards so far.  Some of these you've seen before as just blog photos.

Leaves in the forest behind my house after a rainfall.

 A farmer's irises besides his fields.

Well, not a Bible verse but Martin Luther.

Park leaves shot straight upwards from a park bench.  (I always wanted to see how the photographer gets the leaves and bright sky without overexposing the shot.  I took A LOT of photos but only this one is presentable.)
 

 The work of our hands!  We are blessed!  That's for sure!

A quick photo while walking through Kyoto.  I have no idea how I captured the falling cherry blossom petals.  That's my problem... I never know WHY a photo turns out or doesn't. 

 Ooh...  I was happy with this picture!  That's like a macro-shot with no macro lens!  Again, I have no idea what I was doing with the camera.

Some of photos work out as cards, some of them don't...  I've cropped some pictures and that makes the pixels or whatever blur out a bit.  It is kind of fun to go through the Bible and see what verse might match a photo...  Gives me the much needed Bible reading!
 

Tuesday sweets

This is Wednesday so I am out of here in a few minutes.  I have yet to reach my goal of not forgetting anything on a Wednesday.  How will today go?

On Tuesdays I teach two two hour ladies classes... well, we chat over coffee and eat sweets and crack open a book for about 45 minutes.  If I am on top of things I will make cookies or a cake the night before.  If I'm not organized my contribution besides the coffee will be rice crackers.  Usually one of the many ladies will bring some omiyage (present), either one that she has bought herself for the group or that has been given to her.  All of us regularly get omiyage.

When an elementary student will go on a student trip (the 6th graders went to Disneyland last week) he might bring me Mickey Mouse cookies.  If a friend takes an overnight trip to some tourist spot she will often stop by with omiyage crackers or bean cakes or something.  EVERY town in Japan has an omiyage specialty, usually sweet but sometimes not... For example, the town next to us is famous for its Pot Stickers and so whenever I visit someone in another city I will buy Pot Sticker omiyage.

Oh... I'm off the subject.  For yesterday's English class I made cheesecake (recipe here).  That was pretty good.  But it was out-shone by the cute omiyage macaroons that one friend brought.  Aren't these darling?!  The macaroon bears all had different faces and different flavors.

For photo purposes I put two bears on my plate.  No, I did not eat both of them... One slice of cheesecake and one macaroon omiyage are quite enough calories.